


we set fire in the snow

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Bickering, Complicated Relationships, Cousin Incest, F/M, First Time, Forbidden Love, Grief/Mourning, In which Lord Commander Jon pays a visit to the Queen in the North, Jon Snow is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Post-Canon, Queen Sansa, Rough Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, and tempers fray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 16:52:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: There is a coldness, a numbness, inside of her, a frozen landscape where her heart used to be, and some days she thinks it might choke her, that one morning her maids might enter her room to find a woman carved of ice in her place and Sansa Stark vanished.She is no ice queen, she is an inferno barely leashed, he thinks, as he watches her shaking breath, the flush on her cheeks.





	we set fire in the snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lagardère (laurore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/gifts).



> A post-canon fic with an angsty vibe and an open ending.
> 
> *content warnings for the events of the last season, and for suicidal thoughts. Also, as usual, I refuse to have the Ramsay plot-line in the backstory of my fics, so imagine that Sansa left the Vale of her own accord and then found her way to Jon and Winterfell.

 

* * *

 

Spring has come to Westeros but not in the far north, not where Jon ranges, where the snows drift so high they can hide mountains, where the cold is so strong it can cut, where the howling winds sound like screams, sound like his own nightmares.

Five moons he spent in that cell in the Red Keep, with none but the mice for company, with nothing but his own deserved death to look forward to, his second and final death. A better man would have spent those days in atonement, in prayer or sorrow, not in bitterness, not sinking into the frozen numbness that had lingered beneath each of his actions since he was brought back to life - and for what? To kill his aunt, his lover, his queen?

For a time, she had burned brightly, she had made him _feel_ , made him hope that there was someone else who might take the yoke of rule that was forever being thrust upon his shoulders, hope that he might kneel and serve a greater good. He should have known he was a fool, he should have known that the gods were not done with their lessons on the cruelty of hope, on what a poor bastard boy truly deserved.

Yet still, he had hoped, a selfish hope, that when he passed the Wall, when he ventured into the only landscape that had ever felt like home, he might leave the world and all its many cruelties behind, that he might start again.

He tried to forget, tried to drown his memories with goat's milk; with late nights carousing with the Free Folk, whirling around a fire until he could see nothing but its flames; with working his body to the bone helping build tents and huts for his chosen family, and training the eager young boys and girls just as he had once trained the recruits of the Night's Watch; with learning how to track prey across the snows and read the treacherous movements of ice in lakes and glaciers and pools. He had tried to live a small life, tried to respond to the amorous advances of women and men both, tried to imagine he might have children one day.

But he was a fool.

Men from the Night's Watch found him, begged him to return and help put an end to the vicious squabbles, the violence and anarchy of a brotherhood that had lost its one true enemy. They made him Lord Commander once again, though he nearly punched the boy who had nominated him, though he told them he would refuse it. But how could he when he heard all that had been happening in his absence, when men begged for his protection?

Each morning at the Wall he awoke in a living nightmare, each day he heard the whispers following his footsteps. Queenslayer, Kinslayer, Murderer. If he died, he wondered sometimes, peering over the edge of the icy ramparts, walking too slowly beneath a swaying load of wood being hoisted up by the new cranes, or turning away a meal his steward brought him, would he return here once again, would he ever leave? Was this his hell?

One morning, he had held the rough-hewn dagger he had lately been given by one of the new recruits – a boy who had pissed himself in fear the moment he had been pushed through the gates of the keep – against his bare chest, the point of it sharp like ice, and dragged it down to the spot he knew well, scoring his skin with a line of blood, thinking about how easy it would be, how easy it had been, to push it in, to reach the heart.

It had been a shout from the yard that had brought him out of his daze, that had brought blood rushing back to his numb limbs, and that afternoon he had told his brothers that he would be ranging for the next few moons.

The Free Folk would have welcomed him but he did not want their easy welcome, their love, he did not deserve it. What he deserved was to be alone in a wasteland of ice and snows, of cold. There were rumours of structures the Others had built, strange temples and obelisks, and he had charged himself with finding them. Perhaps he had wished too to find the Others, to go back to the purity of his earlier convictions, to fight a just war again, to lose himself in the clash of sword against sword, to fight for the living instead of learning to live alongside them.

But all he found was ice, rock, snow; all he heard was the wind; and all he thought about, there in the northernmost lands where few had ever stepped foot, was his past, was the deaths he had been responsible for, the people he had betrayed, the people he had left behind.

Some days he found himself shouting at the winds, screaming at the hills. Some days, he thought he might lie down in the snows and let them cover him, let them kill him. But Ghost would not let him, Ghost who had barely left his side since he returned to the Wall.

 _You'd be better off without me_ , he told the beast, _you'd be better free out there_.

When he returned to Castle Black, he was satisfied to see that those he had chosen to lead in his absence had stayed true to their word. Less satisfied to hear them say that he must make a journey south this time, that their coffers were running dry and he was charged to ask the Queen in the North for her help.

He doesn't want to return to Winterfell, he does not want to travel further back in time, into his past, to arrive on the doorstep wearing stinking furs and sodden leathers only so that he might be asked to stand at the very back of a feast, looked down upon by the lords and ladies who sat there.

He doesn't want to see her again, his once-sister, his cousin. To see those blue eyes look at him and know all the ways he disappointed her, how much lesser he was than she had hoped.

She had disappointed him too, in her scheming, and there is a vicious anger that curls inside of him, a flame that was fed by those five moons in the cell thinking of the path that had led him there, of the name he did not wish to have, a father he wished to discard, of the power she had tried to thrust upon him.

It is fire he thinks of as he reluctantly turns south, fire and kindling and wood so dry it might spark a flame from nothing.

 

***

 

She was home and safe but her demons had not left her and ghosts walked the walls, the corridors, of Winterfell, her dreams each night were peopled with all those she mourned, all those she had not kept safe, and more often than not she woke weeping.

Her family had left her here all alone, they had _left_ her, she thought, in the lonely hours of the night, or when she was called to pass judgement on those brought before her to answer for their awful crimes, or when she shivered as she walked through a deserted village, a ransacked hut, and asked her men to dig graves for the dead who had been left there waiting for her like some cruel message from the gods that she had failed, that there were so many people who had perished that she should have saved.

She thought of the criminals she sent to the Wall as her strange, perverse, gift for her once-brother, now cousin, brothers for him who had no brothers, men for him to rule over even though he wished to never rule again, reminders of her who he had shunned, who he did not forgive.

She tried to take pleasures in the small joys around her - the melting snows; the greening fields; the babes born; the children playing out in the fields; the boys who looked so much like her brothers training in the yard, grinning as they swung wooden swords in their fists and grappled with their friends; the orphan girls she made her maids, teaching them to embroider, to sew and mend, treating them far more kindly than she had the maids of her youth, listening to their giggling talk of the stableboys and travellers, the lord's sons – she had tried to count her blessings, many as they were. But she was not so skilled at mummery any more, not underneath where it counted, though she made herself serene and inscrutable to others.

She had been gifted a year's reprieve from talk of marriage, from those very lord's sons. But soon her advisors began to speak of suits, of alliances, of prospects. But not of the things that might still matter to the woman, the girl, underneath the queen - of handsome faces, of kindness, of _love_.

Why should she marry? she thought, sullenly, why could she not raise up one of Winterfell's orphans to rule, give them her name and teach them to be a better ruler than she could ever be. Why did she have to share the throne with a man? A stranger to her home?

Why was she not enough for them, for _anyone_?

Why was she, alone, not _enough_?

There is a coldness, a numbness, inside of her, a frozen landscape where her heart used to be, and some days she thinks it might choke her, that one morning her maids might enter her room to find a woman carved of ice in her place and Sansa Stark vanished. Or perhaps it will be her future husband who will slide into their bed and shout when his fingers are burned by the chill of her skin, by the emptiness of her eyes.

She welcomes the news that the Lord Commander will be visiting Winterfell, that she will have an audience with Jon, if only because she knows that he might, for a brief few moments, bring her out of that numbness, that he might bring her temper to boiling like he always did.

 

***

 

"They call her the ice queen," a drunken man says to his companion in an inn a day's ride from Winterfell, "and gods help the poor fool she weds, for he would find more warmth if he shared a bed with a corpse."

A Northman drags the drunken fool out of the inn before Jon's hand – cold from pushing his horse to make three days journey in one, as if he could hurry his visit in the same manner too – can twitch to his sword or dagger, and he listens to the wet sound of fists on bloodied face outside as he flexes his fingers and drains the last of his own ale.

How long has it been since he has fought with fists or sword, really fought, not trained or threatened or scuffled? A year since the Long Night, the Great War, and the Battle to take back Winterfell before that. A year since he has killed. He shakes his head, grunts, staggers out to the stables where he makes his bed with Ghost in the straw like some fellow beast.

Ghost leaves him outside of Wintertown, fleeing to the woods as Jon wishes he could too.

The walls of Winterfell are being rebuilt, the fields outside its walls are lush with growth, with grain, but it is still jarring to see so few men, so many widows and fatherless children playing alongside the road.

He finds himself searching for a flash of red, of flame, on the ramparts, as if she might be waiting for him there where she always used to linger, staring out at the world in steely determination like the trees themselves might rise up against her. But she is a queen now, and perhaps queens do not have time for such an occupation. Or perhaps she is unhappy that he is visiting and hides herself away in her rooms. A foolish thought but one that brings a small sardonic smile to his lips. Let her be as uncomfortable with this meeting as him, he thinks, as his horse walks through the gates, as he feels a sharp ache in his chest at the horrible familiarity of his childhood home.

"Lord Commander," she greets him when he enters the throne room.

He is caught off guard - by the new, smaller throne; by her pale gown; by her voice; by her face.

 _I'm not ready_ , he thinks.

"Your Grace," he replies, and inclines his head.

He looks at her again, searches her face, her icy mask, and finds the cracks that he always could.

 _Sister_ , he wants to say.

"You must be weary from your journey—" she begins.

"Are you saying I look older than you remember?" he says before he can think.

The face of the guard to her left turns sour.

She raises a perfect eyebrow. "Perhaps," she says. "It is a harsh life, is it not, at the Wall?" She folds her hands in her lap, and her voice gets both softer and harsher. "Not a life I wanted for you, Jon."

He flinches at his name on her lips. "I sought an audience with you, Your Grace, because the Night's Watch coffers are running dry."

"As you said in your raven," she replies, all ice again.

He grimaces, touches his mouth with the back of his gloved fingers. "Perhaps the raven would have sufficed and there was no need for me to travel here."

"I have questions about the management of your coffers."

He huffs. "And yet you always hated numbers, Arya was always better than you."

Hurt flickers across her face and then the steel is back. "I had time to learn, to better myself. What better tutor than the Master of the Coin after all?"

If she had not killed that odious man, he would have done it himself. He touched her, that creep, Jon knows he did.

"If you had questions about my skills with numbers, you should not have left me ruling the North while you journeyed to Dragonstone," she says bitterly.

A knock at the door to the room interrupts their bickering before Jon can retort something more.

"My men will lead you to your room," she says, "you are welcome to join us tonight as we feast House Woolfield."

Jon bows his head again and is led from her presence.

He attends the feast, if only because he cannot bear to sit in his room, here at Winterfell, with its familiar sounds and smells and stone, and ruminate on his past. Besides, he is hungry, he thinks, as he follows the noise of the feast and slips into the hall, wincing at the light of so many candles and lanterns.

Sansa, the queen, sits at the head table, smiling politely at the youth who sits a few seats away. She is wearing a gown that bares the merest strip of collarbone but it is more of her flesh than Jon has since she first appeared at Castle Black, a girl dressed in grey rags on a dying horse.

Every house she welcomes must have a hopeful son, a nephew, a bastard boy, Jon thinks, feeling an icy trickle in his throat, as she spots him and her polite smile drops, as she whispers to her guard who motions him over.

He is given a seat near the end of the table, beside a woman who shifts nervously, eyes widening when she realises who he is, and a boy who has fallen asleep with his head on the table.

A ripple of interest has spread through the room, his name whispered like the wind.

Sansa ignores him and soon the others, taking their cue from their queen, do too.

Jon eats quickly, eyes fixed on his plate, on his cup of ale, but when the dancing begins, when he sees Sansa close her eyes wearily as if gathering strength before politely accepting the hand of the Woolfield heir, with his patchy beard and awkward manner, Jon swiftly leaves.

He can't sleep that night; his room and his head are too full of ghosts.

The next day he leaves the keep early, surveys its grounds, its out-buildings, and lingers at the edge of the Godswood without entering. He's not worthy of it, of traipsing through that hallowed ground, of standing where the only true father he had once stood, brooding under the weight of duty.

When he returns to his room he finds a guard waiting for him. The Queen awaits him in her solar, he is told.

 

***

 

It hurts to see him here, to have him bristle in her presence, to have him ignore her during the feast. But she is damned if she will let him leave before she has spoken to him, properly, before she has heard how he feels, even if his feelings are hurtful, before she has broken through his sullen mask.

Hate me if you wish, she wants to say, as he enters her solar glowering, as she waves away both her guards and they close the door behind them reluctantly, hate me if you wish, only do not feel _nothing_ for me.

She pours him ale, sets it down at the edge of her desk so he is forced to retrieve it, though he does not deign to take the seat she had placed there for him. Instead he stands, just as she does.

"I was told that you had deserted your post, that you thought to join the Free Folk, before you changed your mind some moons ago."

"You have spies at Castle Black?" he asks, wiping ale from his lips.

She shrugs. "We are family, are we not? I wanted to know how you fared."

He drinks the rest of his cup and sets it down.

She pours more for him, her hands trembling, her breath tight.

To have him here in a room with her, here an arm's breadth away from her, here where she can smell him, his furs and leathers, his sweat, makes her nervous, makes something inside of her hum.

"We are family, are we not, Jon?" she presses, wishing to sound haughty but sounding plaintive instead.

"Aye," he says, and catches her hand quickly, making her flinch in sudden shock, so that he drops it again and rocks back on his heels, coughs before taking back his cup.

She is only ever touched by maids now, dressing her, arranging her hair; she is unused to any small tendernesses.

"But you still don't forgive me?" she asks and he looks at her, studies her face without hiding his eyes. "You don't," she answers hollowly.

"You were wrong to do what you did—"

" _Wrong—_ " she spits out.

"Aye," he says furiously.

"So I made her do it, did I?"

"I didn't say that."

"The throne was yours—"

"And I threw it away? Not all of us hunger for power, cousin," he says with a curl of his top lip and she slaps him.

"How dare you," she says as he moves around the desk to stand before her.

There is a pink mark on his cheek from her hand but as she watches it fades. Her breath is heaving, as is his.

"I did what I did for this family, for House Stark," she says.

"I know," he says.

He does not look so angry anymore but he does not look calm either; he looks, she thinks, like he stands on the edge of a battlefield but she knows that he would never hurt her, at least not with his body.

"But you want me to forgive you, to thank you, and I can't," he says.

"I saved you," she says. He is closer now, close enough that she can see the barest glimmer of purple in his black eyes. How had no one noticed it when he was a child, how had they thought he was Ned Stark's son? "The Knights of the Vale won the battle for Winterfell. And then you left me, you ran south, to Dragonstone."

"I brought back dragons, we'd not have beaten the Others without them," he argues.

" _Dragons—_ " she swears. There are so many things she wants to say, so many emotions stopped up in her throat.

 

***

 

She is no ice queen, she is an inferno barely leashed, he thinks, as he watches her shaking breath, the flush on her cheeks.

His own cheek burns from her slap but as the feeling fades he finds himself wishing it would come back, that she might hit him again. And that, that perverse desire, has him shaking himself and stepping back, sinking into the seat in front of her desk.

"I came to speak of Night's Watch business, not of past grievances," he states.

"And I am the overwrought woman who has led our conversation astray?"

"I didn't say that. Why must this be so difficult," he says and rubs his beard.

Why must it? Why cannot they not be as he and Arya are, family, easy with one another's company. Because you do not want that, a sly voice inside of him says, you do not want her to be family.

"Has the young lord Woolfield made his suit?" he finds himself saying. His heart is racing in his chest, the hand in his lap is curled into a fist.

"What?" she asks, baffled, sitting down in her own tall seat. "No," she replies wearily, finding the thread of the conversation, and draining her own drink. "I find that often it is better to ward off an explicit offer before it is made, it saves prides being bruised, keeps the goodwill of each house."

"Pickings must be slim in the North. Have you thought about a Southron house?"

She sits back in her seat, raises an eyebrow again. "You've come here to give marriage advice?" she says, with a laugh. "You?" She brushes her curtain of hair back from her shoulder, looks at him almost haughtily.

How does any young lord feel brave enough to ask for her hand, he wonders, feeling foolish and young himself with her so glittering, so much a woman.

"I wanted you to have a wife, a family," she says, the harshness of her voice pitched against those who had dared to stand against her, he thinks. "And you can, Jon—" she says quickly and takes his hand from his cup.

Her skin is soft, her hand that of a lady. Does his hand feel rough to her? Do the callouses hurt? he wonders dumbly.

"The Wall is in the North and I am Queen of the North. You said no vows, there are none here who would drag you back. You don't have to stay there."

He shakes his head. "I am a Queenslayer, a kinslayer, Sansa, my place is at the Wall. Or better yet, an unmarked grave."

"Don't joke about that," she says fiercely and squeezes his hand so that he can feel the imprint of each nail. "And you're wrong, you don't have to exile yourself."

"I do."

He studies her face, the gossamer golden threads in her eyes, the shape of her lips. He feels his fingers twitch as if he could pull her towards him but he lets his hand stay lax, he lets the nameless thoughts in his head stay mute.

She takes her hand back, squares her shoulders and the moment is passed. "The hour grows late, I have other business to attend to. We shall speak of funds another time."

"As you wish, Your Grace," he says, slipping back into sullen formality.

Her eyes flash and he bows his head.

 

***

 

Maybe if someone else - Arya, Bran – were here they could make Jon understand, make him see that he banishes himself for no reason. But he takes every piece of advice she has, her every opinion, as if it is an insult.

He is so stupid, she thinks that afternoon as she sits in her bath and stews over him. Has he grown at all from that annoying sullen boy who moped around Winterfell? she ponders spitefully. An unfair thought to have because of course he has changed, of course the things he has seen and done have had their effect on him. And truthfully, it is hard to look at him and think of that boy, hard to imagine he might have once been her brother, even though they fight like wolves in a den.

As her hair is brushed by her favourite maid, Sarra, whose hands never tug, who, young as she is, always has some welcome words of wisdom to share, Sansa thinks of Jon and his family, his tragic foolhardy parents. She thinks of Jon the Targaryen heir, and lets her mind wander back to childhood dreams of wedding a prince. Would they have been betrothed, she ponders wryly, and how long might such a betrothal have lasted with the both of them bickering, the both of them proud and haughty and sullen. He was not her golden prince but he is handsome, she thinks, studying her own face in the mottled mirror, and they would look comely together sitting side by side in the throne room, like they did for so short a time before he left her. Before he left her, she thinks and closes her eyes.

"The Lord Commander has got all the maids in a twist, my lady," Sarra says. Sansa insists upon being called that, lady rather than Your Grace, in her private rooms, remembering how awful Cersei was to her own maids.

"Has he."

Sarra nods, her smile mirthful. "Why, they were fighting over who would bring him his bathwater. It fair near came to blows in the kitchens."

Sansa snorts but she doesn't feel the humour she should. "They know of course that he is forbidden from taking a wife."

"I think that's the point, my lady," she says with a conspiratorial wink, "they think he might be desperate for a bit of fun."

"Jon is too honourable for that," Sansa says. Isn't he? she thinks. Too honourable to take a servant to bed, but not a lover.

"He'll leave a trail of broken hearts behind him even so," Sarra muses, "just like you do, my lady, all these poor northern sons."

Sansa tries to smile.

"They're too young for you, they quake in their boots when they stand before you, what you need, if you'll beg my pardon," Sarra says, finishing the last of the small braids on the crown of Sansa's head, "is a man, but the war left few of those behind, did it not."

They share a glance in the mirror. Sarra lost her father and her two older brothers in the wars.

"And none of these boys take your fancy, Sarra?" Sansa asks, standing up from the vanity table as the maid sweeps stray strands of hair from the table.

"Not yet," Sarra shrugs. "But there's still time."

"There is at that," Sansa says, resting a hand on her shoulder.

Still time for Sarra, at least, but not for herself, she thinks hollowly, as she sweeps down the corridors towards the hall.

Dinner is quieter that night, smaller with House Woolfield departed, but Sansa cannot even enjoy the momentary reprieve from courting youths when Jon has chosen to sit at the back of the hall with a group of travellers, when he has chosen to shun her and her hospitality. She feels sharp and fragile as she sits at the head table, her posture perfect, her face a frozen mask, but inside she burns with anger and with hurt.

When she had first arrived at Castle Black after fleeing the Vale and all its strife, fleeing her captor, Jon had been so wondrously happy to see her, so thankful, so tender when he hugged her, when he brought her clothes and soup like they were precious gifts. And now she is like a stranger to him, and now he feels nothing for her? Has she disappointed him so much he cannot bear to sit at the same table?

She watches him laugh at something a traveller from the Crownlands says, sees him lean across the table to speak earnestly to a messenger who passes through to the East, and she hates him, she hates herself.

"Bring the Lord Commander to my rooms once he is done with his dinner," she tells her guard, Arnolf, the one she trusts with her private business more than the others, knowing his private proclivities for other men.

She waits in the antechamber, stewing in her feelings, drinking from the wine one of Bran's advisors has sent to her. It feels like hours before Jon arrives but maybe it is only minutes.

"Your Grace," Jon says at the door, sullen, his face shadowed by the light.

Arnolf glances warily at her and she nods, "you may leave us," she says, surprised that her voice is not shaking.

"This couldn't wait until tomorrow?" Jon asks, studying the trinkets on her mantelpiece - the carved figurines the children of Winterfell have taken to gifting her, the strange jewelled puzzle box that Arya had sent back from her travels, the goblet Petyr had given her before he had died, the scrap of her mother's embroidery she had found stuffed into the loose bottom of a chest here at Winterfell.

"No," she replies.

He turns around to face her. His lips are red with drink, his eyes dark.

"Why did you not sit with me, at dinner?" she says.

"The Watch takes no part."

"No part in polite conversation?" she asks angrily, getting up from her seat. "No part in thanking the Queen who hosts you, who shall gift you funds she does not really have for your coffers?"

He glowers and folds his arms.

"I wish you'd say what you feel," she states bitterly. "I wish you'd just say that you hated me. I wish you'd never have come here, just to make me feel even more alone." A sob is caught in her throat.

"I don't hate you," he shakes his head.

She waits for him to elaborate but he is silent. "That's it? That's all you have to say?" She throws up her hands. She wants to slap him again, wants to clutch at his black jerkin and shake him until he _says_ something, until he _does_ something.

"Forgive me for not being good at speeches—"

"You were good at speeches once, when you had to rally men behind your cause. You made me believe that you loved the North, that you wanted the best for this family."

"Things were simpler then."

"No they weren't," she snorts.

"You keep asking me if I forgive you," he says then, moving closer, close enough she can see the tick of muscle in his jaw, that she can feel the heat from his body, harsher than the heat from the fire that blazes next to them. "But I think it's you who won't forgive me."

"Maybe so," she says.

"And what have I done? I helped you retake Winterfell, I gave you back your home, I killed a _queen_."

"You didn't do that for me, don't say that you did."

"Then what?"

"I wanted to have my family back, to have all of us here at Winterfell. But now it's just me here alone. You _left_ me."

"I was not yours to _have_ , yours to order," he bites out.

She huffs a breath. "And that is the crux of your problem, is it not, Jon?" she swears, "you cannot bear to be ruled, to be led, by a woman, that is why you cannot forgive me."

He grabs her arm; his jaw is tight. "I bent the knee to a woman."

"A woman you bedded."

He scoffs, studies her as if she makes no sense to him, as if she never will. "Are you jealous?" he asks.

Jealous of _what_ , she thinks.

His hand slides up her shoulder now. The room feels loud in its quietness, close and hot, like the moment before a storm breaks. His thumb is on her jaw and she is quivering, her blood feels like it's burning.

"Are you jealous?" he murmurs, "were you?" but his words seem untethered of meaning; his eyes are caught on her lips.

"Don't be stupid," she whispers, as if replying to something else, to herself.

 

***

 

He has lost his head, he thinks woozily, he has lost all his wits. She has driven him mad, he thinks, as he watches the slide of his thumb across her cheek, as he sees her teeth tug at her bottom lip and feels himself lost, burning.

He kisses her. He holds his hand behind her head so that she cannot run away from him, drinks the noises of shock, the whimpers of pleasure, from her lips, searching out the taste of her mouth with his tongue, devouring her like he is only an animal.

His hands roam her body as she tugs at the collar of his jerkin tight enough to almost choke him, pressing herself against him. She trembles in his arms, and it makes him want to bite her neck, to rip her gown from her.

"Sansa—" he says and kisses her again before she can say anything, pushing her back next to the fire, back against the bare stone walls.

He feels the shape of his name on her lips, the sound of it underneath her moans as he palms her teats, her hips, as he presses his hardness against her. Gods help him but he is burning, he is aflame, and he cannot stop.

"I want you," he grunts, "I want you bare, I want to have you, beneath me, riding me, I want you—"

"Jon—" she gasps, tips her head back as his fingers fumble at her gown, as he tears at the seams.

"Say you want me," he demands, shoving up her skirts, fumbling at her bare thighs, so hot that his fingertips feel scorched. "Say it."

"I want you," she says and then bites at his cheek, and then pushes him away so that he staggers. "The bed—" she says, her breath heaving, her hair wild and her shoulders pale and gleaming in the firelight.

He pushes her down onto the bed, crawls up over her and tugs at her gown again as she helps him, rolling from side to side, wriggling as he stands on his knees above her and bares her to him. And when he has ripped every last piece of cloth from her, when she is lying there panting, looking like every dream he tried to forget, every dark thought, he groans like he is wounded.

Her teats are full, her waist narrow, her hips already marked by his greedy hands. She looks at him balefully, like she is daring him to hurt her. She looks at him and he knows that he cannot turn away, cannot ever run away from this, no matter how far north he flees. Is this why he doesn't forgive her, why he cannot ever? he thinks as he tugs away his own clothes, as he mouths at her belly, her teats; as his hand works between her thighs, finding the slick of her, drawing whimpers and moans that make him want to die.

"I've thought of this—" he says, though he himself did not know he had, did not recognise those dreams of fire for what they were - warnings, temptations. "I thought of you—"

"Please, Jon," she says and he hushes her desperate sounds with a kiss, wanting suddenly to be slow, to be careful, and yet knowing that he can't, that this is not a time for soft love-making.

He watches her eyes flutter, her mouth open in gasps, as he works her with his fingers, as he grits his teeth lest he spill too soon. She grabs at his sides, digs her nails in as she pulls him down over her and it is the easiest thing in the world to widen her hips, to palm her backside and slide himself inside of her, there where she is hot, there where she is ready for him.

His thrusts are harsh, she squirms underneath him, whimpers with pleasure as he pins one of her hands over her head, as he kisses her, fumbles his other thumb between them where she needs it.

"Please—" she begs and he wants to give her everything, wants to keep her here on the precipice begging him for more, caught in his arms, _his_.

When she peaks, her back bows on the bed, and she cries high in her throat so loudly it makes him think that the whole keep has heard her, and at that picture he groans and spills inside of her, works his seed in with sharp thrusts.

" _Fuck_ ," he grunts between his teeth, "Sansa—"

Her body is trembling in the aftermath now, and he is shaking too, the sweat on his back making him shiver, what they have done making something inside of him quake.

Her eyes are heavy-lidded as she looks at him, she runs a finger down his cheek.

He slides free of her, rests his head on her breastbone if only not to look at her, if only to pretend that there will not be an afterwards, that no words need to be spoken. That he will not have to leave her.

 

***

 

He falls asleep on top of her, a pleasant weight, as she gazes up at the canopy of her bed, her thoughts quiet, her body shivering now and then. She had not thought of this, not truly, not in her waking hours, and yet when he kissed her she had thought only, _of course, yes, this is why_.

She feels indolent, hazy, her limbs pleasantly sore, her hair tangled up like knotted rope around them.

What a fool she is, she thinks, as he shifts, as she looks at the fan of his lashes on his cheek, his bruised mouth open in sleep. What a fool they both are, what a cruel joke the gods have played upon them.

 _I'll never forgive you for this_ , she whispers - to them, to the man in her arms, to the world that has set the both of them on this path.

To know what passion feels like, to be wanted for herself and not her name, not her fleeting beauty, to feel perfect kinship with another, _love_ , and to have that taken away.

 _If you loved me you would stay with me_ , she might say to him when he wakes, making him glower and grow sullen, bitter in his duty, _if you loved me you would not hurt me by leaving me_ , she might say and watch him flinch like her words were barbs.

Instead, schemer as she has had to become, she thinks of moons and years, she plots visits by the Lord Commander to his queen, by the queen to the Wall. How many nights may they have together in a lifetime, may they steal?

Not enough.

He murmurs and shifts again, she strokes his curls back from his forehead as he wakens, feeling tender, feeling young.

"Sorry," he says, voice thick, "for falling asleep."

He raises himself up on his elbows, eyes studying her as she lets herself be studied. "I want to say that I'm sorry for this too," he says hoarsely, his hand sliding up her waist again, making her body heat. "But I'm not."

"Not even when you have to leave me?" she murmurs and he winces as if hurt.

"No," he says and bends to brush his lips across hers, to press a kiss to her jaw, the pulse of her neck.

"You're a cruel man, Jon Snow."

He huffs a breath. "And you are a maddening woman. You're cruel to me too, to give me this. And I wish I could only hate you for it."

"If only—"

"Don't," he says harshly, "don't make this harder."

She laughs but without any mirth.

"I am supposed to wed—" she says and he catches her hair in his fist, sets his teeth to her chin, her throat.

"Don't," he says again, as she shifts her hips so he can fit between them.

"Don't marry?" she asks mockingly, her voice changing to a whimper when his fingers find her wet, when he strokes her so gently she cannot bear it.

 _I shall not marry, if you do not leave me_ , she wants to say, but her words are stolen by waves of pleasure as he slides beneath the furs and sets his mouth to her cunt.

He holds her down until she peaks twice, and then crawls up over her, smirking triumphantly, looking like some dark conqueror.

Fire and blood, she thinks wildly, as he lifts her thighs around his hips, as he pushes one knee back against her body, as she moans underneath him with each punishing thrust; and then she shoves him onto his back, presses her hands against his shoulders, and rides him into the bed, his hands tight on her hips, his eyes black like coals.

Fire and blood, and a punishing Winter that always comes even when you wish it would not.

 

***

 

Three days he stays in her bed until duty calls him onwards and as he mounts his horse, he feels his muscles scream, the bites on his skin burn. He has been wounded by her - in his body, in his heart - but he knows he has done the same to her.

Three days was long enough for moments of tenderness, for soft touches and gentle murmurs alongside the violence of their passions, but it was not long enough to burn this fire between them down to ashes, to put out the flames, he thinks ruefully, bitterly, achingly, as he rides out and looks back at her standing on the ramparts as he remembered her, her hair a curtain of fire, her body rigid like she has been sculpted from ice.

He will take that fire back North, to warm him through frigid nights, he thinks; to burn inside of him so that he shall never find any peace; and let her feel the same, he thinks, let him not be alone in his agony.

If he loved her he should surely wish her peace, so does he love her? Or is this how a wicked man loves, painfully, cruelly, selfishly? Is he her punishment just as she is his?

And though they spoke of many things in the long hours of the night - of family, of the ones who had left them, alive and dead; of duty and strife; of desire – there was one subject they did not speak of, one notion that he finds himself dwelling on obsessively as he journeys north, as the air gets colder and the nights sharper, with only Ghost to warm him.

He may be a bastard no longer, but he knows how bastards are made.

A foolish notion, surely, for, however wild she was when she was in his arms, however crazed the inferno of their passions, she will be practical, she will do what needs to be done. Won't she?

This time, for certain, but the next time? And the time after that? When they have waited six moons to see one another again, six moons to touch, will she be so wise then, and will _he_ be strong enough not to beg for something he should never beg for, never dare to want?

 

***

 

In her rooms at Winterfell, the Queen in the North pens a letter to the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, quick flicks of her pen writing out a code they had both learned in childhood. When she sets down her quill, her gaze moves to the cup of tea she brewed herself from a hidden supply of herbs, and she wills her hand to move, wills herself to do what she must.

But she is tired of people leaving her, tired of being alone.

 _Don't be stupid_ , she whispers again, but the fire in the hearth is too loud for her to hear her own words, the ache in her heart too powerful to be overcome by mere will alone.

As a child, the tragedies had been her favourite, the sad songs of star-crossed lovers, and maybe that has sealed her fate, maybe this is what she deserves. But, oh, she could love a child, Jon's child, she thinks, feeling her breath hitch, her resolution harden, she could love some perfect creature born from their mistakes, their agonies, and why shouldn't she, who could stop her?

He will never forgive her for this, she thinks, as she knocks the tea into the fire, but what is one more hurt, one more recrimination, atop the pile of kindling set between them.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed this, I'd love to hear what people think! :)
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable post on tumblr [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/185037680237/we-set-fire-in-the-snow-by-framboise-in-which-the)
> 
> I have no plans to continue this fic, as I prefer to leave it open-ended, but feel free to headcanon whatever continuation you desire!


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